Friday, April 21, 2017

Three axis alignment

13th Age and 5e have largely dispensed with alignment mechanics. That said, alignments could serve as a useful guide to behavior for characters to follow. However, the traditional two axis alignment is too confining due to the confusion of methodical with law-abiding. Therefore, I propose dropping neutral entirely and splitting the law/chaos axis into orderly/chaotic and lawful/unlawful. The orderly/chaotic axis represents a character's general thought processes, while the lawful/unlawful axis represents their respect for society's laws. This gives a total of 2×2×2=8 alignments, one less than the three axis model.

For example: a demon barbarian would be chaotic unlawful evil, a demon manipulator would be orderly unlawful evil, and a demon bureaucrat would be orderly lawful evil.

While I feel alignments are too simplistic to represent realistic moral divisions, I do find them useful as a guide for distinguishing general categories behavior. I will be using them in the future as a means of differentiating between, say, demons and devils and deuces and whatever.

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